A teacher’s thoughts on “A Life on Facebook”

I like to watch the “trending” videos on youtube, there’s always something interesting, and a million people can’t be wrong, right?

Alright, I admit it- this video doesn’t relate directly to education… but you have to admit- it is cool. In an indirect kind of way, it made me think about my students.

The main thing that kept popping into my mind was how quickly the world has changed. Facebook was launched in 2004, and it is now a virtual space that is not only fully capable of chronicling someone’s life, but also changes people’s lives every day. For me, the most striking thing about this video is how realistic it is. I know people who have met their spouse on facebook. I have read articles and heard stories about divorces that have happened because of pictures on facebook. It has become a huge force in peoples’ lives. Nothing that I saw in this video was unremarkable at all.

How does facebook (and websites like it) affect my students? It makes them more aware of what is going on in the lives of their peers. This can be both a postive and a negative: it means that students are able to help each other and get to know each other on a deeper level, but it can (and does) lead to things like cyber-bullying.

If you are a teacher who doesn’t use facebook, I would highly recommend checking it out just to create an awareness of the way it functions and how it can affect the dynamic between your students and their peers. I’m not saying that you should add students to your facebook account (though many teachers get around this by creating an account specifically for their students or adding them on a limited profile), but you should know how it functions and what it is capable of.